Potential bidders were recently invited to Aperture Gallery in New York City to see a bevy of work and learn how to bid online for art. The auction will benefit Doctors without Borders/Medicines Sans for Haiti Earthquake relief, and include a variety of photography and works of illustration.
Photos like Martin Schoeller’s portrait of Barack Obama, published in a 2004 Gentleman’s Quarterly magazine has already received a $400 bid online.
Members from LUCEO collective were asked to participate in the auction.
“Sally Berman is one of the good people behind the auction and reached out to us for donations,” said David Walter Banks, who donated photographs amongst other collective members Kendrick Brinson and Matt Slaby. “Sally has been a good friend to LUCEO since her time running the photography department at XXL Magazine, and she’s now on to some great new projects including RESPECT Magazine and her company, Run Red Creative.
“I sent over a handful of options to Sally and she selected the roundup photograph,” wrote Slaby, who is based in Denver. “That picture is the lead image from a large story that ran in January’s edition of Mother Jones…The story is about prisoners who gentle mustangs as part of their rehab in Wyoming’s correctional facilities.”
(©Matt Slaby/LUCEO, 2009)
“I made a few trips to the prison to explore the story and was particularly interested in seeing where the horses come from. I scheduled a trip to the prison with dates that overlapped a roundup on nearby BLM land and hit both aspects of the story at once. In the photograph that is being auctioned, government contractors are using a helicopter to move a herd of wild horses into a trap they have set for them just off camera. The horses are slowly moved across the landscape until they reach the open end of a large, funnel-shaped chute. Once they’re in the chute, the helicopter comes in quite a bit lower and pressures the horses to run towards the trap. Once they’re in, the gates are closed and the horses are then sorted, vaccinated, and branded. The aim of the roundup is to keep target herd numbers on the range by removing or fertility treating excess horses. A certain number are not re-released and, instead, end up being adopted or in the prison programs.”
(©Kendrick Brinson/LUCEO, 2010)
“It’s often tricky for me to choose a photo that people would want to hang on their wall because you want it to be universal and beautiful, and you want it to stand alone without the rest of the body of work beside it,” wrote Kendrick Brinson, who is spending time in 2010 to document life after retirement in the Southwest. “It’s a favorite of mine from my Sun City: Life After Life essay I’ve been working on this year in Arizona.”
(©David Walter Banks/LUCEO, 2008)
“Sally has always been great to me, so of course I was happy to make a donation,” wrote Banks, who donated a frame from his Cannabis Culture series. “I pulled it for consideration because I’ve been thinking about working more on the project lately. From the handful that I pulled, Sally selected the photograph of a girl trimming drying marijuana plants in a green room. The image has an extra surreal layer with the girl wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt, and hopefully will be interesting enough to make the auction some money.”
The whole group was excited to help Doctors without Borders/Medicines Sans for Haiti Earthquake relief.
Kendrick noted, “I’m super thrilled to have our images up there with photos by so many talented photographers. LUCEO is always excited to be included in any art-related charity that goes to a great cause like this one.”
You can see quite a diverse selection of photographs and visit the auction’s website here:
heART for HAITI
